It wasn’t until the State Department of Criminal Investigation initiated its inquiry into the raid on the Annex in late 1963 that Otto decided to inform Detective Van Helden about the anonymous note and hand over the copy he’d made. Van Helden interviewed Otto over a period of two days at the beginning of December 1963, but surprisingly, there is no mention of the note in the interview report. However, in Van Helden’s forty-page summary report produced at the conclusion of the investigation in the fall of 1964, there are several paragraphs in which he described Otto informing him about the anonymous note. Based on Van Helden’s handwritten comments on the Abschrift copy, he had received it on December 16, 1963, approximately two weeks after Otto’s interview. It would seem that Van Helden was convinced by Otto’s claim that he didn’t know Van den Bergh, because the issue was dropped and the Abschrift copy of the note that Otto had provided him never made it into the official case file.
The Cold Case Team reviewed Otto’s correspondence during the period of the investigation and found a small but perhaps significant clue: the day before Otto’s scheduled interview with Van Helden on December 1, he wrote a letter to Miep expressing his doubt about any conviction of Willem van Maaren, since there was no “written evidence” that he was the betrayer.5 It’s an odd statement and possibly a veiled reference to the anonymous note—“written evidence”—that explicitly pointed to Van den Bergh.
Having survived the curiosity of the world press, Otto instructed the remaining helpers, Miep, Bep, and Kugler, that he would be the sole spokesperson of the Annex story. Kugler, who was now living in Canada, defied that instruction when he agreed to collaborate on a book with a writer named Eda Shapiro, a book she intended to call “The Man Who Hid Anne Frank.” Kugler did not inform Otto about it, and when Otto found out, he was furious. After learning that the book did not have Otto’s support, the publisher canceled the book’s publication.6
After Otto’s death, Miep became the spokesperson and protector of the Annex legacy. Although she was skilled at keeping the secret, she was not so adept at hiding the fact that she had one. In her many press interviews, speeches, and private conversations, she let clues regarding the betrayer leak out. And all the clues pointed to Arnold van den Bergh. The betrayer was someone Otto knew. He knew Van den Bergh. The betrayer had been Jewish. Van den Bergh was Jewish. The betrayer died before 1960. Van den Bergh died in 1950. Otto did not wish to punish the family and children of the man who betrayed his family. Van den Bergh was the father of three children who survived the war and outlived Otto Frank.
Vince remembered the question that John Goldsmith, the president of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, posed to him back in 2018: “You know that Otto lied to Wiesenthal about knowing the identity of Silberbauer. Why do you think he did this?” At the time, Vince didn’t completely understand what Goldsmith was telling him, but now it made sense. Otto didn’t want to reveal Van den Bergh’s complicity. What’s more, he went to great lengths to conceal it.
Both Otto Frank and Arnold van den Bergh made choices. From the perspective of survival, Otto Frank made the wrong choice—although at the time, of course, he thought he was protecting his family and four other people by finding them a hiding place. From the perspective of survival, Van den Bergh made the right choice. He saved his family by giving up addresses, including Prinsengracht 263, to the SD. But he, perhaps, paid a price, too. He died of throat cancer, which was strangely apt: he lost the ability to speak.
Vince is careful to say that there was no “aha” moment to end the investigation; the emergence of Van den Bergh as the betrayer was just that: a slow coming together of evidence and motive, a jigsaw puzzle piece that suddenly, undeniably fit. And as confident as the team is about its conclusion, there was no joy in the discovery. Vince would later say that he was overcome by “a weight of great sadness” that has stayed with him. As the team separated, going back to their jobs, families, and home countries, each of them grappled individually with their shared experience. By the time the investigation ended in 2021, they knew they’d lived through something powerful and important. They came to refer to the people in the case as if they were people they’d actually known. Vince admitted to dreaming about the Franks and wondering aloud how he himself would have behaved under the circumstances.
Just as complex were the team’s feelings about sharing their findings with the world. Everyone knew how powerful—and upsetting—their conclusions would be; they’re braced for the world’s reaction. The fact that a respected Dutch Jew had likely passed addresses to the SD, that someone not all that dissimilar from Otto Frank himself had been Otto’s betrayer . . . it is shocking. But they could not remain silent. As Rabbi Sebbag had told Thijs at the beginning of the investigation, the most important thing, the only real loyalty any of us should have, is to the truth.